Aftereffects of Child Abuse: Dreams of Abuse

I am very glad that I found your blog. I have very few memories about my childhood. I generally know that it was unbearable and I spent most of it crying and sleeping. I am dx with PTSD, depression, and anxiety and am currently in therapy. I have three children and I am now starting to have horrible dreams about them being abused. It makes me sick even thinking about it. I recently had a pregnancy scare and even dreamt of my future child being abused sexually as a newborn. I haven’t had the courage to talk to my therapist about the dreams. I just tell her I have horrible dreams. It good to know that I am not going crazy or a evil human. It even took me several dreams to get up enough courage to google to topic because I feel so ashamed about the dreams. But I am desperate to stop having them. Thanks for the info. I will try to talk about it with my therapist on Monday. – Rebecca

I had horrendous dreams for years. I dreaded going to sleep at night because it was like having to enter into a horror show. As I have healed, my dreams have gotten much better. In fact, I sometimes even have pleasant dreams.

I have been able to track my healing progress through my dreams. In my dreams, I used to be a victim. I was frightened and struggling but unable to stop the abuse. Now when I have abuse-related dreams, I fight back and have much more power.

For example, I had a dream the other night that I was sitting on my father’s lap. I was wearing a man’s shirt that buttoned up the front. I was thinking about how good it felt to sit on my father’s lap and feel his love. However, his hands kept wandering to places they did not belong. Instead of getting upset over it, I pushed them away. I knew that I had nothing to fear because I was in control and was not going to let him or anyone else touch me anywhere I did not want to be touched.

In my awakened state, the dream is horrifying because I would not want to sit on my father’s lap and have any sort of incestuous relationship going on with him. (Side note – My father never overtly sexually abused me like this.) However, while I was in the dream, this behavior seemed expected but not a big deal. I could have chosen to get all worked up over the dream, but I did not. Instead, I focused on the power that I had in the dream. I knew that I was in control and that another person did not have the power to harm me.

Our dreams are one way that our subconscious works through the trauma we faced. We have nothing to fear in our dreams. Yes, they can be disturbing, and some can even be flashbacks. However, if you view them as an insight into your subconscious, they become much less scary.

5 Responses

Faith, I need to ask you something. There may be triggers in here. I am not sure. I feel bad because I feel like I am writing and taking your time and your emotional energy, but not giving anything back. But I need to talk about this. I am in therapy but I am afraid. I have such strong conflicting emotions about my childhood. One side of me says yes it happend. The other side says I am less than nothing, and I am aweful for saying such horrible things about my family. Neither side is good, both just make me want to do horrible things to myself. I am thinking that if I tell you a few things, you might have similar experiences, or know of someone else who has (I signed up for isurvive yesterday and I am waiting for my account to be activiated, but I still wanted to ask you) I was in my early 20’s when I had a nightmare. It happened one night after my boyfriend and I had sex. It was not the first time we had sex, but it was the first time I had an orgasm. In that nightmare I was in the locker room of my swim class. I was a small child, maybe kindergarten to 2nd grade? One moment I am standing facing the lockers, and the next I am face down on the floor near a shower being raped. In the dream I was scared and I felt sick. I told myself to just be still, don’t move so he can finish and get off of you. When I woke up from the dream I felt like I was in a daze, or not all there for awhile. At that point I did not directly link that man in the dream with my dad. The other thing that I have trouble with is certain smells, sounds and feels. Specifically the smell of an indoor pool area – the chlorine, the feel of the warm moist air, the hollow sounds of lockers, children in the pool, makes me feel scared and sick. Certain types of stairwells do this to me too. Sometimes I find myself wiht my eyes closed, holding my head and talking to myself – usually saying to myself, like I dont what to think about it. I hadn’t hurt myself in a very long time, about 12 years. Well about 3 years ago, when I was on the phone with a friend and she was talking about a niece, and molest and how the mother was protecting the men instead of her daughter (who is safe now and her mother is supporting her). But that phone conversation put me into a rage and before I could think rationally about what i was doing, I had burned myself. Since then I have continued to do horrible things to myself, I guess to feel some control over the emotions I am having. I have also fallen back on a few other tricks to sooth myself. Also, I get these overwhelming urges to hide. I need so badly to feel safe. During these episodes I have hidden under my desk, in the bathroom cabinet at work, in my closet. I was at my mom’s house, the house I grew up in, awhile back. I was helping her clean out some stuff so I was getting into places I hadn’t been in years. I opened a closet and the smell . Instantly I was a small child, hiding in the cabinet in that closet. It was just one moment that came to me… I was in that cabinet and I was sliding the door closed I was feeling safe because I knew I couldn’t be found. I also have a memory of standing by a pool and I have to go poop, but I cant, because it hurts because it feels like it is coming out the wrong hole ??? .
A few weeks ago I had a dream. In the dream I was in my bed in my bedroom growing up. It was dark, I could only see the silloette of me and my dad with the light from the window. We were in the middle of some sexual act. I looked away and when I looked back, my daughter was laying with us. It was still dark, but I could see around her mouth a ring of something red. I woke up. god I felt so sick.
I gave some writing to my therapist a few weeks ago. It was very graphic and upsetting. I gave it to her, partly because I had no recollection of writing it. Not sure which was more disturbing, what I had written, or that I didn’t remember writing it.
Could all this be happening and it be the case that I am just seriously mentally ill, I wasn’t abused. Because despite all these experiences, there is another side. It argues very strongly that this is all in my head. And I am a disgrace to my family for saying anything. I should let it go and not talk about it. I loved my dad, everyone loved my dad. How could it have been him. I cant see any physical scars you would expect from someone who had been raped. I have memories of my dad and I am little and in those memories, I am not afraid of him. My dad died when I was about 25 years old. But I did approach my mom a few months ago, which was horrible. She wasnt angry or defensive, she just asked me a bunch of questions and I was convinced she would give me answers. The only good part about that conversation was that I cried, I cried like a baby and I didn’t hold back.
What do you think. Am I mentally ill or is this all part of the process of dealing with childhood abuse.
Sorry this was so long. Thank you for reading this.
Good wishes for you Faith
~ Palucci

[…] dreams after child abuse, flashbacks as dreams, nightmares, PTSD In the comments on my blog entry Aftereffects of Child Abuse: Dreams of Abuse, Palucci shared a dream that she feared might be a flashback. From all that she describes, I agree […]

paluuci, your not mentally ill, i am going through a simular experience of flashbacks, dreams and strange thoughts. ive always told myself that its my own sick mind making them up. but i went to the gp and he said i’m not crazy and he’s getting me a counciller. is your therapist helping you? my doctor says its a 2 year waiting list for one (i live in UK)
annonumous…. 20 years old